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Hi,

I'm sure you get this quite often but I need help with my 8yo son who is on Melatonin for his sleep pattern. I have tried everything his Paediatric Consultant advised and sleep clinic but he just does not sleep longer than 5 hours and for some reason his body will always wake for 5am...
He has been on Melatonin since he was in nursery so about 2/3yo. Is he not ever likely to come off Melatonin? And does this mean he always will stay on 5hr sleep? He seems to have ample energy but always hungry?!

Thank you

Hi,

Thanks for your question. We have worked successfully with families with the support of medical practitioners and used a behavioural approach to wean children off melatonin. As our approach is around behavioural intervention we are not in a position to advise families around reducing prescription drugs so we always work alongside the professional who has prescribed so that they can take the lead in this area.

In terms of the 5am wake up, some children do tend to have a tendency to be larks and wake early. We do use a number of strategies to try to move their body clocks to a later wake up time. This involves keeping sleep diaries so that we can look at the overall sleep/wake cycles.

We also take into consideration other factors that may be waking them early in the morning these can include a range of things such as hunger, drop in body temperature, noises in the environment, change in light, lack of understanding about the time of day. From there we can start to develop the right strategies to encourage a later wake up.

I hope that helps,
Vicki